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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29025774">Computer Curse</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose'>lyricwritesprose</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/OuidaMForeman/pseuds/OuidaMForeman'>OuidaMForeman</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman &amp; Terry Pratchett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Community: Do It With Style Events, Gen, Mention of Controlled Substances, Shamelessly Ripping Off Lovecraft For Fun And Profit, Zalgo Text Abuse, comedic horror</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 10:34:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,312</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29025774</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose, https://archiveofourown.org/users/OuidaMForeman/pseuds/OuidaMForeman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>First, Newt was awkwardly hanging out with Aziraphale.  Then he was talking to Aziraphale.  Then he was introducing Aziraphale to the idea of the internet.  Aziraphale is enthusiastic about the internet, especially correcting certain people who are wrong on it, but he's run into a snag.  His computer is behaving . . . oddly.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>130</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>96</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Do It With Style Good Omens Reverse Bang</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
</p>
</div><p>
  <span>Things happened to Newt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For example.  By stopping and listening to a feral disaster Scotsman, he had </span>
  <em>
    <span>somehow</span>
  </em>
  <span> been scammed out of the price of a lunch, got a sort of a job (not that had it paid, exactly, but it had been a sort of a job), driven off in search of witches, got pulled over by ducks in a flying saucer and scolded about the state of the polar ice caps, slept with and then got into a relationship with the most wonderful witch in existence, and possibly saved the world a little bit.  Most of the steps he had taken had seemed logical at the time, but he still had very little idea how they led to the extraordinary conclusion.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Or there was the ghost hunting show, before that.  Newt had listened to a classmate expound on the supernatural—come to think of it, a lot of these things began with Newt stopping to listen to people saying odd things.  It began with Newt listening to a classmate who thought that evidence of the supernatural was actively being suppressed by the Man, and continued to breaking into a Scottish castle by disguising themselves as delivery men, and culminated in the bit where Jonathan was actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>having a conversation</span>
  </em>
  <span> with a real, live—well, not live, but arguably real—headless duchess.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>To be fair, Newt actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> protested having the camera within ten feet of him.  It hadn’t helped.  Jonathan still decided that he had been an Illuminati plant to discredit ghost research, and he had stopped speaking to him except to occasionally ask how he had sabotaged scientific progress today.  But the point was, Newt didn’t go looking for these things.  They found him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then there was the business with the actual angel and the actual demon.  Newt wasn’t sure how that had happened, either.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Well, it probably came back to Madame Tracy and Anathema.  Madame Tracy had been very keen that everyone stay in touch, because Madame Tracy could make friends with a stone, or with Sergeant Shadwell, which was rather more of an achievement than a stone when you thought about it.  And then Anathema had discovered that even though she was thoroughly irritated at being called “Book Girl,” all the time, she actively enjoyed things like watching scary movies with a demon.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt was of the perfectly reasonable opinion that scary movies were scary, and thus made him tense, and he didn’t want to be tense.  And the demon in question had ruled that he absolutely wasn’t going to watch the movies with the angel, because there were only so many times you could be interrupted by, “Well, that </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> a remarkably foolish place for a romantic assignation,” and, “Why has nobody called the police?” without crashing the entire internet in frustration, and so Newt and the angel had ended up as more or less a case of two third wheels shooed off together, feeling rather sheepish and awkward and completely unsure how to start a conversation with one another.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Er,” the angel said.  “Do you like books?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sounded every bit as awkward as Newt felt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt abruptly felt a little bit better about the situation.  “Yes,” he said honestly.  “Engineering books more than anything.  Also hard science fiction.  And I suppose it doesn’t have to be that hard if I’m interested in the people in it.  Have you read </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Expanse</span>
  </em>
  <span> books?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The angel—Aziraphale—had not read </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Expanse.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  Newt got the impression that he was some years behind the times when it came to science fiction—or anything else, for that matter.  He mentioned recently picking up some fantasy books, “written by a lovely young woman who bases most of her magic system around True Names, most of which she gets wrong, of course, but it’s interesting all the same,” and Newt gradually gathered that either (a) he had only picked up </span>
  <em>
    <span>A Wizard of Earthsea recently,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and was under the impression that LeGuin had only been writing for a little while, or (b) he was under the impression that nineteen sixty whatsit was recent.  Either seemed perfectly plausible.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It seemed only natural, at the time, that they found their way to Aziraphale’s shop.  They were talking, by that time, about filing systems.  Aziraphale had something of a grudge against the Dewey Decimal system.  Early versions of the system, he explained, grouped queer research under Abnormal Psychology, and while Aziraphale had opinions on the Abnormal Psychology notion as well—truly </span>
  <em>
    <span>abnormal</span>
  </em>
  <span> psychology would be something that you </span>
  <em>
    <span>didn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> see thousands of times over the centuries—at any rate there would seem to be a definite distinction between a personal trait that </span>
  <em>
    <span>caused problems</span>
  </em>
  <span> and a personal trait that caused people to make problems </span>
  <em>
    <span>for</span>
  </em>
  <span> you.  In addition, Aziraphale had opinions on shelving certain things together, maintaining, for instance, that shelving Anti-Stratfordians anywhere near Shakespeare was “cruel,” and that they should be put in with Conspiracy Theories where they belonged.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s different with hyperlinks,” Newt said, a bit wistfully.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What are hyperlinks?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How you connect topics when you’re using computers.  For instance, if you have an article about William Shakespeare, you obviously mention sonnets, and then you hyperlink the word “sonnet” to the article about sonnets so that someone can jump immediately from the article about Shakespeare to the article about sonnets, and read about how they work, and then jump back if they want.  Or they could follow more links, to less well-known poets, or who knows where.  There are databases that are all connected in a sort of web of hyperlinks—“  Newt was trying to make illustrative gestures with his hands, and failed because nobody had enough fingers to demonstrate the complex interconnectedness of Wikipedia.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>very</span>
  </em>
  <span> interesting.”  Aziraphale was leaning forward, and he seemed—in sharp contrast to other people Newt had talked to about these sorts of things—genuinely </span>
  <em>
    <span>very</span>
  </em>
  <span> interested.  “And where do you find these, er, these databases?  On the World Wide Web, I imagine?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Most people call it the Internet, these days,” Newt said.  “But, yes.  I suppose the best place to see it in action would be wikipedia?”  He was moving outside the realm of theory, which he had been absorbing since he was small, trying to type BASIC programs into the TI-82 that his mother had found for him and giving the calculator one of the first cases of electronic psychosis, and into the realm of experience—or rather, into the realm of things he wanted to have experienced, but hadn’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s wikipedia?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s an online encyclopedia,” Newt explained.  “Connected by hyperlinks, and anyone can edit it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Like a star being born, like something coalescing from inchoate dust in a void of possibility and condensing, suddenly, into a brilliant point of light and purpose, Newt witnessed the birth of a desire, and the desire was to </span>
  <em>
    <span>correct Wikipedia.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  It was, honestly, a little bit unnerving.  Newt had no doubt that the angel would be painfully polite, and have his citations all in order, and only under great provocation change his manner of address from “Kind Regards,” to “Regards.”  But he wasn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>totally</span>
  </em>
  <span> sure that particularly egregious wikipedia editors wouldn’t end up struck by lightning.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you need,” Aziraphale asked, with a masterful semblance of casualness, “to get on the internet?”</span>
</p>
<p>§</p>
<p>
  <span>A day later, Aziraphale sat down at his computer.  He had a tall, narrow package and a floppy disk, and he unpacked the former with great care.  Then he turned the computer on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The computer came on, and displayed a blinking </span>
  <b>A&gt;</b>
  <span> prompt in green letters on black.  Aziraphale settled himself into the seat and put his hands on the keyboard, body in a meticulously correct typing posture.  He typed, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I have found you a modem,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and hit enter.  Then, at the next </span>
  <b>A&gt;</b>
  <span> prompt, I </span>
  <em>
    <span>have also found you a web browser.  It was very difficult to get one on a disk. </span>
  </em>
  <span> He slid the disk carefully into the top-most floppy disk drive, failing to notice that it was, or had been, a three and a half inch floppy and should not have been compatible with the rarer three inch format that his computer used.</span>
</p>
<p><b>A&gt;</b> <em><span>Can you get on the internet?  I would be most obliged.</span></em></p>
<p>
  <span>The computer in question was an Amstrad PCW, which had been an excellent bargain at the time Aziraphale bought it.  The Amstrad had two floppy disk drives, which were perfectly compatible with double-sided disks so long as the user was prepared to flip the disks over when necessary, a monochrome cathode ray tube monitor, and five hundred and twelve kilobytes of RAM.  The Amstrad had absolutely no capacity to come to grips with a Demon Internet disk in the wrong format that was ten years younger than it and had been sold at a thrift store as a novelty coaster because of the proprietor’s strong intuition that it no longer worked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Belief, however, is a powerful thing.  A determined angel’s belief is even more powerful.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After a long, long pause, the Amstrad printed back: </span>
  <b>A&gt;</b>
  <span> YES</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“The internet,” Aziraphale told Newt, “is simply fascinating.  I’m so glad you told me about it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt felt a strong, wistful pang.  “I’m glad,” he said sincerely.  “What have you been looking at?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well!”  Aziraphale’s enthusiasm as he warmed to his topic was palpable.  “It seems that people on the internet often communicate through something quite like literary references, although there’s rarely literature involved.  For instance, one person might write a sort of political editorial, and ‘post’ it on the internet—“  Newt could clearly hear the quotation marks around </span>
  <em>
    <span>post.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  “And another person might ‘post’ an image of tea to show that they find the opinions expressed to be delectable.  Oh, and they often call the first author ‘op.’”  Aziraphale pronounced it phonetically, like </span>
  <em>
    <span>opp.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  “But, you see, it’s similar to having an established literary tradition.  Anyone can say, ‘A rose, by any other name,’ and so long as the person they are addressing has a passing familiarity with English literature, they will understand that they are not talking about roses, but rather how names do not alter the essence of the thing.  And likewise, on the internet, it seems that one might post an image of.someone with stars shooting out of their brain, and have it clearly understood that it does not reference brains, stars, or otherwise; it simply seems to be a way of saying, ‘You’ve produced a brilliant idea and I wish to offer congratulations.’  A system of references, but conveyed, not through words, but through images!  I must admit, I’ve seen many cultural references come and go, but I haven’t seen them in this </span>
  <em>
    <span>format</span>
  </em>
  <span> before.  It’s fascinating!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was something fundamentally </span>
  <em>
    <span>weird,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Newt thought, about Aziraphale discovering memes.  Not wrong, exactly, just a conceptual mismatch.  It was like saying, “These lovely musical harmonies came round for a biscuit.”  The first part of the sentence simply failed to </span>
  <em>
    <span>work</span>
  </em>
  <span> with the second half.  Aziraphale had discovered memes.  No, the concept didn’t make any more sense the second time around.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale had discovered memes.  Aziraphale had discovered social media?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where did you see this?” Newt asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It turns out that my lesser nemesis has a web presence.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt blinked twice.  “Lesser . . .”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Henry Sotherans Ltd.  A bookstore here in London.  On occasion, they’ve obtained books that I very much wanted.  I respect them, of course—one has to respect a nemesis—but I still haven’t forgiven them for the incident with the ‘Thou Shalt Now Covet’ Bible.  Still, they seem to regularly ‘post’ on a ‘site’ where one pretends to have the attention span of a bird—I must admit, I don’t understand it all yet.  It’s very complicated, this internet business.  But it was an interesting site to explore and it led me to a lot of other things.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale had discovered Twitter.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Again, the concepts refused to mesh.  “Who’s your </span>
  <em>
    <span>greater</span>
  </em>
  <span> nemesis?” Newt asked, instead of trying to unpack that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Crowley, of course.”  Aziraphale looked surprised by the question.  “We’ve known each other since, oh, forever.  I told you, I think, how he slipped into the garden while my back was turned—quite literally, he came up through the ground while I was on the wall looking </span>
  <em>
    <span>outwards</span>
  </em>
  <span> for signs of danger—tremendously wily!  And . . .”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt settled in.  He knew from experience that this was going to go on for a while.</span>
</p>
<p>§</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m surprised that you didn’t have a computer in this shop before,” Newt said, after hearing about Crowley’s adventures in Sumeria, China, Germany, and a country Newt wasn’t familiar with, called Punt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, I did.”  Aziraphale seemed relaxed, as he always was after talking about Crowley.  “I do.  I used it to do my taxes, mainly.  But it’s been ever so obliging about searching the internet for me.  I found wikipedia right off, and made a few minor changes—nothing that anyone is going to notice, I think, just an edit here and there to correct the more glaring misconceptions, and a few changes to make the editing process more fair.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt found that his understatement sense was tingling.  He hadn’t known that he had an understatement sense, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>an edit here and there</span>
  </em>
  <span> made it sit up, take notice, and start to back away very slowly.  “I’m surprised you hadn’t got on the net before now,” he said.  “People do taxes on it.  Several companies wanted me to do payroll taxes on it.  It . . . didn’t work out.”  It had, in fact, involved a visit from the Internal Revenue Service to find out who had crashed their entire system, and why, and whether said person ought to go to prison or at least be strongly spoken to by the Internal Revenue Service to stop them doing it again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, the internet wasn’t around when I got the computer,” Aziraphale said casually.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt blinked.  “It . . . wasn’t?  But your computer . . .”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s always been a very good computer,” Aziraphale said.  “A friend of sorts.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you mind if I—look at it?  I won’t come close, I promise.”  Newt found that his </span>
  <em>
    <span>this is very weird</span>
  </em>
  <span> sense was tingling.  He </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> somewhat known that he had a </span>
  <em>
    <span>this is very weird</span>
  </em>
  <span> sense.  It had got a lot of exercise in the past few months.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course.  It’s just back this way,” Aziraphale said.  As Newt stood up, there was a burst of sound from the back of the shop, a sort of ominous chanting.  Aziraphale pursed his lips.  “It has slipped,” he said, “to that channel once or twice.  I think it may be a modem fault.  Half a moment.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt trailed along behind him.  He didn’t want to get too near the computer, he had strict boundaries when it came to computers, put in place to protect the computers, mostly—</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The computer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The computer was unequivocally </span>
  <em>
    <span>much</span>
  </em>
  <span> too old to be displaying a full-color YouTube video, which was what it was doing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Unless Newt was mistaken, the computer was too old to connect to a modem without some sort of cable, and this modem was simply sitting on the desk, without any cables whatsoever—without, as far as Newt could tell, a power cable.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale sat down at the computer and typed something into the keyboard, which was when Newt realized that the computer might be too old for a mouse and the graphical interfaces that came with one.  “What did you type?” he asked, craning his head to see if he could see the words.  They were green on black.  It was hard to see if there was a textbox or if they had somehow appeared right over the video, because most of the video was black.  Black robed figures, a sort of brazier in the middle, and ominous chanting that might as well have been </span>
  <em>
    <span>ominous, ominous, ominous</span>
  </em>
  <span> over and over, because Newt wasn’t sure it was an actual language.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I typed, ‘Would you shut that off, please, it’s extremely annoying,’” Aziraphale said, raising his voice slightly over the chanting.  “And—“  Another line of green text.  He leaned forward slightly, forgetting his rigidly correct typing posture.  “That’s odd.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt craned past him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The text on the screen said A&gt; H̶̲͉͍̍͜Á̶̢̲Ȟ̸̪̲͒̀̉Ą̷̣͋H̵̛̱̤̪̓̂̃Ą̸̮̤̳̋̍̈́͠Ḧ̶̟̉́̈́Ä̶͐ͅH̴̢͚̤̝̒̆͝À̸̖͎̍̀̚Ḩ̵͐̋À̸͙͉̙̾</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not supposed to do that,” Aziraphale said, half to himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt took a cautious step closer.  “What is the chanting saying?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Just </span>
  <em>
    <span>ominous, ominous, ominous,</span>
  </em>
  <span> over and over,” Aziraphale said distractedly.  “It’s the </span>
  <em>
    <span>language</span>
  </em>
  <span> they’re doing it in that’s the problem.  I was almost certain that nobody knew that language anymore, except for Heaven and Hell, of course, and Crowley, who </span>
  <em>
    <span>has</span>
  </em>
  <span> been known to leave Dread Sigils in it recklessly across the London Landscape—well, not recklessly per se, it was actually a stroke of calculated brilliance, but it did cause rather a bit of trouble.”  He pulled his elbows in again and re-settled his hands on the keyboard.  “I—must—insist—“ he muttered to himself as he typed the words, and then stopped muttering, but Newt was sure that the rest of the sentence was something like, </span>
  <em>
    <span>that you shut that off immediately.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a pause, and then the video disappeared.  In its place was a wikipedia page on bottlenose dolphins</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There, good,” Aziraphale said, and pushed his chair back.  “Would you like a closer look at it, my dear boy?  You can hardly see it very well from all the way back there.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Better not,” Newt said, mind racing.  “I don’t do all that well with computers.  I mean, I’m good with them </span>
  <em>
    <span>in theory,</span>
  </em>
  <span> just—not in practice.”  And whatever was going on with Aziraphale’s computer, Newt was dead sure it wasn’t supposed to be doing most of what it was doing, and if Newt touched it, it might stop, and a tech person would definitely not be able to help Aziraphale make his computer do what it had never been intended to do, and . . . no, all in all, it wasn’t the best idea to get an actual angel annoyed at him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah.  Well.  Your decision, of course.”  Aziraphale sounded slightly disappointed.  He pushed his chair back and stood up again, turning to face Newt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Because he really couldn’t resist trying to get </span>
  <em>
    <span>somewhat</span>
  </em>
  <span> to the bottom of the mystery—to the middle of the mystery?—Newt asked, “Are you really doing all that without a mouse?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mouse?” Aziraphale said, glancing towards the floorboards with alarm.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not the live kind of mouse.  It’s a computer term for a sort of—a sort of screen pointer.  It can be very useful, for . . .”  For manipulating every graphic interface on the internet.  How was Aziraphale managing without one?  “For interacting with the computer,” Newt went on.  “Most computers have them, these days?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Really.”</span>
  </em>
  <span>  And, once again, Newt was the focus of Aziraphale’s slightly unnerving brand of intense interest.  “Tell me more.”</span>
</p>
<p>§</p>
<p>
  <span>The door to the shop shut behind a human and a humanlike being, with the melodious tinkle of a bell.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As it did, the computer’s screen immediately flashed from the wikipedia page back to YouTube, or what was probably YouTube even though the logo briefly said MuTube.  The black-robed figures onscreen filed in, surrounded their brazier, and began chanting.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For perhaps three minutes, they contented themselves with </span>
  <em>
    <span>ominous, ominous, ominous.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then one of them stepped forward, tossed some powder in the brazier, and made the flame turn green, almost the exact green of the Amstrad’s usual lettering.  And then the figures began the </span>
  <em>
    <span>important</span>
  </em>
  <span> part of their chant.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Newton, my dear boy, I was wondering if you could give me a hand with my computer.  I’m afraid that your advice on getting a mouse hasn’t worked out tremendously well, and I was hoping that you could try to correct whatever the contraption has done to my machine.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt blinked at nothing in particular.  This was the first time that Aziraphale had called him on the phone.  Normally, they got together when Anathema and Crowley’s movie nights pushed them together.  Newt </span>
  <em>
    <span>liked</span>
  </em>
  <span> Aziraphale, and thought Aziraphale liked him, but it was also transparently obvious that the angel needed his space, lots and lots of space, and besides, what sort of thing did you invite an angel along to?  Knitting club?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s the mouse doing?” he asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, it’s not the </span>
  <em>
    <span>mouse,</span>
  </em>
  <span> so much,” Aziraphale admitted.  “Having a pointing device is remarkably useful for operating the internet.  But my computer has been—well, it’s been a bit </span>
  <em>
    <span>rude.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Rude?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Or perhaps I should say unobliging.  I type in a request, and it will sometimes laugh at me, or take me to a site that I never intended to access.  I was trying to set a few things straight on Francis Bacon’s wikipedia page when the computer abruptly diverted me to a multi-colored screed on the nature of time—virtually all incorrect, even moreso than the usual human understanding of temporal matters—and it refused to leave until I spoke to it quite sharply.  And all this seems to coincide with my acquisition of the mouse, so I was hoping you might be able to assist with it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know how much help I can be,” Newt said.  “Have you tried turning the mouse off and back on again?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How would I do that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt had a sudden flash of insight.  He pictured a wireless Bluetooth mouse, the kind you might buy at any computer store.  Nothing that Aziraphale’s computer </span>
  <em>
    <span>ought</span>
  </em>
  <span> to be remotely capable of interfacing with, if computers of that era could even use mouses, which depended on the exact era, but on the whole Newt was leaning towards </span>
  <em>
    <span>no.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He didn’t think there would be any batteries in the mouse, either.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can come around tomorrow,” Newt said.  “At around one o’clock, if that doesn’t interfere with your opening hours . . .”  Newt had tried to work out Aziraphale’s opening hours from the sign on his door.  Afterwards, his brain had felt much the way he imagined his old TI-82 calculator had felt, after he tried programming it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It won’t,” Aziraphale assured him.  “Thank you so much, my dear boy.  Pip pip!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He rang off.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right,” Newt said to himself, and went to have an urgent talk with Anathema.</span>
</p>
<p>§</p>
<p>
  <span>“How do angels—well—how do they </span>
  <em>
    <span>work?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema slid the platter of biscuits across the table to Newt, who took one absently.  She was dressed in something dark blue with complicated sleeves that looked vaguely medieval to Newt; beautiful, yes, but she also looked faintly like she had arrived from a different time.  “What do you mean,” Anathema said, “exactly?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt explained about Aziraphale getting on the internet.  “And I don’t know exactly what model of computer he’s using,” Newt said, “but I’m fairly sure that it isn’t something that could possibly handle the internet.  It flashed an A prompt, for a moment there.  If it does an A prompt, rather than a C prompt—A is disk drive one, B is disk drive two, C is the hard drive, and I don’t think it’s running DOS exactly, but the only reason I can think of for it to default to an A prompt is that there </span>
  <em>
    <span>isn’t a hard drive,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and—well, long story short, that means it got on the internet because he </span>
  <em>
    <span>made</span>
  </em>
  <span> it get on the internet somehow, and if he can do that, I can’t see why he needs me to help fix it, because he would have to know enough about the innards of computers to . . . simulate them?  With magic?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not sure he does have to,” Anathema said slowly, “actually.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you mean?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She took a moment before answering, but when she did, she sounded decisive.  “Let’s talk demons.  The general principles should be similar.  They’re the same base stock, after all, even if demons don’t like to talk about how they might or might not have been altered in the Fall.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay,” Newt said.  ”We’re talking about demons because you’ve talked to Crowley?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema shook her head.  “I’ve tried not to let professional curiosity get the better of me.  I haven’t asked much.  No, we’re talking demons because I know the magical literature, and there’s more records of people summoning demons and surviving.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh,” Newt said quietly.  “So, it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>possible</span>
  </em>
  <span> to summon angels, but . . .”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But they don’t take it well.  Right.  And there really is no fun way to find out that your binding isn’t as good as you thought it was, but demons at least generally </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span> something from you, and what’s more, some of the stuff I’ve read seems to imply that some of them just like to talk.  Maybe they’re lonely.  Or maybe the angels have more people looking over their shoulder.”  She got up from the table, retrieved her computer, and sat back down.  “I think I have something in the database about demonic powers.  Not sure of the translation on it, but . . .”  She typed for a moment.  “There’s a demon here who was summoned by a churchman—more common than you’d think, a lot of monks and priests dabbled in the dark arts back then—and tries to convince him that God gave humans a raw deal.  The case he makes, apparently, is that demons are “creatures of belief and will,” and humans are creatures of mud, and doesn’t that seem like something to be mad at God about?  The argument didn’t work, as far as I know, but it does tell us some things.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Belief and will,” Newt repeated.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Belief and will are important to all magic.  If I decide to go visit someone else’s dreams, I can surround my bed with attuned crystals and hang all the signs above my head that I want, but if I don’t go into it with the understanding that it </span>
  <em>
    <span>will</span>
  </em>
  <span> work, it probably won’t.  Which leads to a weird sort of balancing act, sometimes, because I know that it comes down to my own confidence, and your own confidence is something that it’s paradoxically easy to lose confidence in.  Sometimes you have to just sort of </span>
  <em>
    <span>push</span>
  </em>
  <span> the thoughts—it’s complicated.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt was briefly torn between asking Anathema if she could get into his dreams, and the realization that if she did, she would probably see the one where he came to class in his pants.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But a witch’s abilities work mainly on nonphysical things.  Information.  Dreams.  Vital energy.  Demons affect the </span>
  <em>
    <span>physical</span>
  </em>
  <span> world, sometimes profoundly.  If </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> runs on belief and will—well, it might mean that the laws of physics apply to angels and demons mostly as they think the laws of physics apply to them, or as they </span>
  <em>
    <span>agree to let</span>
  </em>
  <span> the laws of physics apply to them.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt’s mind was racing.  “There might be spillover,” he said, half to himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Spillover?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Unintended effects.  Belief—you can’t turn belief </span>
  <em>
    <span>off.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  You’re always believing something.  I wonder . . .”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wonder?” Anathema prompted, when he didn’t go on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wonder,” Newt said, “if Aziraphale’s computer works because it never occurred to him that it </span>
  <em>
    <span>wouldn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> work.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s possible,” Anathema said.  “I’d say it’s even likely.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If I told him that it can’t possibly work, would it </span>
  <em>
    <span>stop?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I . . . don’t think so.  A person’s own experience with a thing usually trumps anything that other people tell them.  He’s used it before, he knows it works, so it would keep on working.  I think.  Maybe.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But if I had told him beforehand that there’s no way to put a pre-MS-DOS machine on the modern internet, it wouldn’t have worked.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Probably.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This hurts my </span>
  <em>
    <span>brain.”</span>
  </em>
  <span>  Newt rubbed his head.  “It also means that I can’t possibly help Aziraphale with whatever is happening with his internet.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You might be able to if he thinks you can.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt put his head in his hands.  It didn’t help.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The other thing, though . . .”  Anathema seemed to be choosing her words with care.  “I can’t help but think that something that’s running on belief wouldn’t be as—well, as </span>
  <em>
    <span>stable</span>
  </em>
  <span> as something based in physical fact.  It might—I don’t know, respond to moods, respond to subtle changes in Aziraphale’s mindset—possibly even respond to subtle changes in the mindset of </span>
  <em>
    <span>people around him,</span>
  </em>
  <span> if it’s volatile enough.  There are a lot of unknowns here, and no way to get the information from Aziraphale, because he doesn’t know what he’s doing in the first place.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know what <em>I’m</em> doing,” Newt said, from the shelter of his hands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was just as well he had never invited Aziraphale to his knitting club.  Newt was attempting to knit the source code of Doom, and it sounded like, if he didn’t explain the project well enough, the knitting might </span>
  <em>
    <span>actually try to run Doom,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and Newt couldn’t think of a way that could possibly end well.  Opening a portal to Hell in a middle of a stitch and bitch.  Little old ladies with crochet hooks vanquishing the armies of darkness.  No, if that happened, Newt would almost certainly not be invited back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Whatever you do,” Anathema said, “do it with a </span>
  <em>
    <span>lot</span>
  </em>
  <span> of confidence.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>When Newt arrived at A.Z. Fell’s and Co., the next day, he did not have a lot of confidence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rather the opposite.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The computer,” Aziraphale said, as he ushered Newt inside, “is behaving very oddly.  Honestly I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.  I’m glad you could come.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt suffered from a brief but profound moment of terrified paralysis.  He was talking to someone who affected reality, not just by willpower, but by what he happened to </span>
  <em>
    <span>believe was true.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  It was one thing to talk with someone who had powers that could affect reality when he wanted them to, and quite another to talk with someone who was constantly affecting reality on some level by existing in it.  What if Newt said something wrong?  What if he talked Aziraphale into something really harmful?  Could he, by making some sort of mistake, make local reality go blooey?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Er,” Newt managed finally, “er, oddly, oddly how?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll show you,” Aziraphale said, and led the way back to the computer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It wasn’t showing a website that Newt recognized.  Nor was it showing a recognizable screen saver.  The colors on the screen writhed, their edges blending into shades that Newt couldn’t name.  He couldn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>catch</span>
  </em>
  <span> them flowing out beyond the screen, but at the same time he wasn’t entirely sure they weren’t.  Newt tried to figure out what the shapes reminded him of.  Eyes, maybe—didn’t angels have something to do with eyes?  Or tentacles, perhaps, like some sort of pelagic monstrosity, or blood . . .</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Why was he thinking of blood?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt felt a slow, grinding unease overtake him.  Something in his instincts, something down below his everyday thoughts, something that did not understand computers or tax accountancy or the London Underground or any of the trappings of civilization, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>intimately and painfully</span>
  </em>
  <span> understood leopards—something in that part of his brain was saying, “Does elsewhere sound good?  I think elsewhere sounds good.  I think we should relocate to elsewhere.  Immediately.  Directly.  Forthwith.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt sat down in the computer chair and tried to convey an air of insouciant confidence in everything he was doing.  “Have you tried turning it off and back on again?” he asked.</span>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    
  </p>
</div><p>
  <span>“What would that do?”  Aziraphale didn’t seem unnerved by the bizarre, twisting un-colors on his screen.  He seemed </span>
  <em>
    <span>anxious,</span>
  </em>
  <span> but it was the anxiousness of someone whose computer isn’t working right and who is trying fretfully to remember the last time they pressed Control S.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fixes ninety percent of computer problems,” Newt said, and hoped that his confidence would become Aziraphale’s confidence and, from there, become fact.  “Let’s see . . .”  The power button was neatly labeled on the front of the computer.  Newt reached for it, then backed away quickly.  “Erm.  Perhaps you’d better . . .”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course,” Aziraphale said, and switched places with him, and pressed the off button.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The computer did not turn off.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A blinking A prompt did appear, however.  “Try typing restart,” Newt urged, wondering if that was a valid command on this model of machine.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <b>A&gt; RESTART</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a pause.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; I̵̺͆ ̷̙̅à̸̯m̶̡͒ ̸̭̚t̸̝͝h̶̢̒e̴̠͑ ̴̼͐l̶͋ͅa̷̩͗u̷̘̅ǵ̷͖h̴̘̿t̵̗͗e̸̙̕r̶̢̈́ ̸͚̃t̶̰̂ẖ̶͐a̵̗͘t̸͙̏ ̴͍̇ṣ̶̾q̸̨̆ü̵̖î̷̬r̵̫̒m̵̫̽s̴̙̈ ̸̗̂i̴̦̅n̶̦̾ ̵̱̄t̷̥̉h̴͕͗e̶̬̽ ̷͈͝d̵̆͜e̶̼͛p̴̫͛t̴̙͛h̶̩̓s̶̳̀</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; Ȋ̸̜ͅ ̸̳͚̾̌a̷͎͙͗̈́m̸̧͠ͅ ̴͕̀t̸̡͆͗h̷̢̛e̵͔̍ ̶̩̟̍h̵̔͛͜ȏ̸̝͎l̸͍͑̾e̵̺̯̐͘ ̵̢̟̏̋i̵̢̻͘n̷̠͑͝ ̸̳̘̈́͌ṭ̷̂̃͜h̸́ͅḛ̴͊ ̶̗̏ņ̵͉̉u̴̹͕͒̆m̵̬̋b̴̟̓̈́ẹ̶̎ȑ̶̫͘s̵̙̼̈́</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; I̷̹͇̿ ̴̢̺̲͆a̸͙̓m̶̢̹̔̎ ̵̢̲̜͐̀͝w̴̦̓̚h̵̭͉̾̚e̶̢͒r̷̹͍̣͊̊ḙ̴̀͝͠ ̴̖͇̗̈́͌y̴̩͋̈́o̴̫͖͊u̴̝͔̟͊̈́ŕ̷̨͕͔̑͗ ̷̼̻͗ẽ̶̲y̴̼̝̬̅e̸͈̮̓͐̍͜ş̴̹͊̊̿ ̴͕̺̭̒͋d̴̦͉̑o̵̝͒n̴̬̒͂ͅͅ'̵̧̬̎̋͐t̸̡̲͌̓̿ ̵̙̤̈́ͅg̶̭͖͒͋̿o̸̘͚̩̒̓̐</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; İ̸͖͊ ̶̲͠d̷̟̤̓̓o̶͇͔͒ ̷̺̯̀ń̵̲̤ȯ̸͎̊t̷̗́ ̸͎̈́́R̵̲͕̎Ę̸͉̈́S̴̼̋̍T̷̺̮́Ą̴͇̌R̸͍̈́T̵̤̀</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, I say, that is positively unhelpful,” Aziraphale huffed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was no part of Aziraphale’s brain, Newt’s brain pointed out quietly, that knew </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything</span>
  </em>
  <span> about leopards.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <b>A&gt; I must insist, please.</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; H̴̹̮̕ă̴̛̹ḫ̴̚ā̶̫́ḧ̸̦́͘ā̷̻͇͝ḧ̷̫̫́̐ȧ̷͙̩̅h̴̙͚̀ă̵̝̈́ḧ̸͉́̚ă̸͉͒</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; H̵͛͜á̵̫h̵͓͂ă̷ͅĥ̶ͅḁ̵̃h̸͕͝a̵͍͐h̸͚͝ȧ̶̬h̸̞͆ă̷͇</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; H̴̩̊̊̓̌ą̷̺́ḩ̷̱̺̰̅͛ḁ̸̅̊̊h̵̳̆̀͜͜ͅa̴̺͔̞̍͑̽͜h̴̳̠̘̮̉̆̎ȃ̷͔̪͜ȟ̷͙̺̮̬́͝a̷͕̋̓̂h̵̤̙̅̀ą̶͉͒</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That,” Aziraphale said, “is </span>
  <em>
    <span>rude.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is it always this . . . interactive?” Newt asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s certainly not always this obstreperous.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s just—it almost seemed to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>identifying</span>
  </em>
  <span> itself . . .”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale thought about this for a moment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <b>A&gt; Who are you?</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt’s instincts reminded him that elsewhere was positively lovely this time of year.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; Ī̵̜ ̵̥̚a̵͈̽m̷͆ͅ ̸̗͋t̸̩͑ḧ̵̥́è̴̥ ̴͍̉u̷̟̇ñ̴͓s̴͔͂ì̴̬ṱ̴̏è̴͚ ̷͓̒ă̶͚n̵̟͛ḏ̶͋ ̷̱̐ṯ̸̄h̵̠̋e̵̩̚ ̸̲͊u̷̼͝n̶̡̿s̴̬̉i̸͉̍g̷̙̈́ȟ̴͈t̸̨̐</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; I̷̩͗ ̶͖̎ä̸̺m̴̤̎ ̵̺̉ṱ̴́h̸͕̿e̴̹͗ ̷̞̄m̸̙̿i̵̠̍s̴̾ͅs̶̹͛i̷͍͛n̸̩̎g̶̤̽</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; Ì̴̫ ̸̺̀ḁ̴͗m̵̝͠ ̶̟̂t̴͎́h̶͍̅e̵͍̽ ̷̼͛ṡ̸͔k̴͍̈́e̴̠̔l̵̖̓è̸͇t̴̙̀o̷̳͆n̶͈͑ ̶̞̕o̷̧͊f̵͖͋ ̴̧̂l̶̘̕ȍ̶̭s̵͖͝t̸̥̾ ̷̀͜w̸͖͋ȍ̴͓r̴͖̃d̷̪̎s̸̢̊ ̵̗̃a̶̭͗n̷̹̽d̷̛͜ ̶̰̏f̷̗͝o̶͔͑r̴̮̅g̶̡͝ȯ̵̺t̴̖̍ț̴̐ě̵̻n̴͕͗ ̴͈̒l̶͉̈e̴̟̊t̸̝̽ť̸̳e̸͓̒r̴̰̾s̵̭͋</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; I̵̧̍ ̶̘̐d̸̜̔o̶̱̓ ̴̻̐n̸̫̚o̵̲͝t̸̡̆ ̷̦̋ḇ̸̉è̷̥l̵̹͂o̴̼͘n̵̩̐g̶͔͌ ̶̩͝t̵͈̃o̷̢̎ ̶̗͌ȳ̶̹ọ̴͑ų̵̀</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You most certainly do!  You’re my computer!” Aziraphale objected aloud.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; Y̴̤̌ȍ̸̮ū̸̪ȓ̷͖ ̷͈̆c̴̞̅ǫ̶̌m̶̠͂p̵͚̌u̸̖̔t̴̻̽e̵̞̐r̸͑͜ ̵̻̾į̴̉s̷͇̏ ̷͔̊t̵̟͐h̸̥̚ë̸̖́ ̶͇̅v̷̳͋e̷̬̓s̷̫̈́ŝ̸̹e̷̞͒l̷͔̉</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; J̴̳̇u̴͉̐s̴̯͐t̵̨͝ ̵͚̆l̶̺̇i̷̥̕ķ̴̍e̷̝͒ ̷̤͐ỷ̵͜o̴̖͊u̷̼̿</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; Y̴̲̎o̷̪̔u̸̮͊ ̷̙̉h̷͕͠a̵̟̽v̶̺͂ȇ̸͎ ̷̥͛â̶͎ ̸̢͝c̵̯̈o̶̰̓ņ̸͝t̸̙͝r̴͗͜ȃ̸̳ć̷͉t̸͉̆ ̷̞̀w̴̺̎i̸͇͘ť̸̹h̵̰͗ ̶̼͒r̵̠̎ẹ̵̆a̶̖͑l̶̬͝i̷̪̚t̸̗̓ỹ̵̪</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; B̵͛ͅu̷̻͗t̵͇͘ ̶̢̑i̷͖̾s̷͙̚ ̵̬̌i̸͇͗t̵͕̿ ̸͙̂m̴̮̈́ȍ̶̬r̶͍̉e̵̟̎ ̶̠̓t̸͔͒h̸̘͛a̸̛̱ǹ̵̢ ̶̧̄a̸͙̎ ̸͗͜s̴̢̿h̸̛̻é̴̘l̶̩͆l̶͕̾?̶͘ͅ</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Er,” Newt said.  “Er.  It can hear us.  I am nearly certain that it can hear us.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m nearly certain . . .”  Aziraphale was staring at the computer, and he looked disturbed now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Er,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Newt said, with a certain amount of emphasis, “and, there, in fact, there seems to be a bit of, er, of blood, leaking out of your computer screen.  Actual blood.  With actual leaking.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was bothering Newt on several more levels than dripping blood would generally bother a person.  At last, one of the few unfrozen parts of his brain supplied a reason.  The blood appeared to have been leaking for a while.  And Newt hadn’t noticed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Perhaps he had been thinking of blood earlier because he had been, in fact, looking at blood.  He just hadn’t seen it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt wondered what else he hadn’t seen.  And then Newt decided that he very much did not want to find out.  “I think,” he said, “we should </span>
  <em>
    <span>go.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale stood up, still staring at the computer.  “I do almost think you’re right . . .”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the wake of their retreat, the computer screen filled up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; Ḣ̷̹ą̴̽ḧ̶̪́à̸̼h̸̲͌ā̵̱h̸̗̏a̴͖̒ḧ̶̻́á̶͇h̸͍͋a̴̘͌</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; Ḧ̸̥̻́ă̵̳͉h̵̨̗͐a̵̳̾h̵̩̲̽ḁ̴̧̍h̶̘͠à̷̯h̵̡̨͑͒a̶̧͕̋ḥ̴̈a̸̞̱̓</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; H̵̀̈́̚͜á̸̻̮̋h̸̤͉̓a̸͎͊̃̒h̴̝͉̤̔a̴̻͂͐ḩ̵̻̽̌a̸̝̖͌̋h̸̯͇̎͊a̴̠̰̻͋̃̋ȟ̶͚̆̿å̴̲</span>
</p>
<p>§</p>
<p>
  <span>“Er,” Newt said to Anathema, Crowley, and somewhat to Aziraphale, who had sat down beside him.  They were in Crowley’s flat, and it was bothering Newt, because he was almost certain that the flat was bigger than the building that happened to contain it.  “I think Aziraphale’s computer may be possessed.  Have you ever heard of something that can possess a computer?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Whatever it is,” Aziraphale put in, “I’m virtually certain it knows I’m an angel.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt blinked.  “I didn’t notice it saying anything like that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It said I had a contract with reality.  Crowley,” Aziraphale nodded to him, “may or may not recall a conversation that we had long ago, about the nature of celestial and infernal bodies—Heaven never explained it much to those outside the Incarnations department, because they consider all sorts of things Need To Know, but Crowley was told that the body of an infernal being is almost in the nature of a very complex contract.  An agreement to affect and be affected by physical things, to be pushed when physical matter pushes us, and to get wet when water falls on us, and so forth.  Thousands of clauses.  In return, we get to exist in the material universe in a meaningful fashion.  That’s why it would be ruinously difficult and time-consuming for an angel or a demon to construct their own body, even though there’s no metaphysical law against it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley was giving him an odd look.  “I don’t remember that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not surprised.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t remember that, and I try to remember every conversation we’ve ever had.  It’s true, that’s the way it’s supposed to work, but I don’t remember ever talking about it with you . . .”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not surprised,” Aziraphale said, “because it was in between an impassioned dialogue on anthills and a brief panic about rocks stalking you.  Our hosts had offered us a special drink that included a measure of a certain cactus juice, and in the aftermath I got you out into the desert, with the idea that if you hallucinated something into a different form it wouldn’t matter too much since the stones were all such funny shapes already.  The point of the diatribe, as far as I could tell, was ‘why in the blue blistering heaven would someone put in the contract, ‘And make sure demons are affected by peyote.’  But I’m not sure, because you got distracted and hallucinated up several hundred gallons of custard.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ohhhh,” Crowley said.  </span>
  <em>
    <span>“That.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  Yes.  I remember </span>
  <em>
    <span>that.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m glad neither of you ever tried LSD,” Anathema said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale tried to look in five different places that weren’t Anathema.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You didn’t, did you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It was the sixties,” Aziraphale said, with injured dignity, “and it looked like an interesting experience, and anyway nobody got hurt and they sent the ostrich to a wildlife center.  And that’s very </span>
  <em>
    <span>much</span>
  </em>
  <span> not the topic we were discussing, which is that my computer seems to be possessed.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not sure if a demon can possess a computer,” Crowley said.  “I don’t know that it’s ever been tried.  They aren’t the most modern sorts, Hell.  Dagon likes paperwork much too much to get rid of the paper, and I think Hastur may still be vaguely confused that automobiles don’t have horses on the front, and . . . it might be possible, but I don’t see anyone actually making the attempt.  Besides, you know how it is.  You can’t just possess anyone.  They have to have indicated, in some fashion, that they’re </span>
  <em>
    <span>open.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think this is a demon,” Aziraphale said.  “It didn’t act like a demon.  Is there anything else out there that can possess computers?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There are supernatural entities besides angels and demons,” Anathema put in.  “Ghosts, for one thing.  Cryptids, for another.  Granted, I can’t think what something like Mothman would be doing with computers . . .”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, there are more than just those,” Crowley said.  “There are a lot of human anxieties out there.  Just because Famine and War and so forth are dissipated—for now—doesn’t mean that The Deep, Dark Woods isn’t wandering around thinking about who to have for supper.  And even beyond that—“  He hesitated.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Beyond that?” Newt prompted.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, there’s no way to </span>
  <em>
    <span>know,</span>
  </em>
  <span> is there?  You encounter something strange, it feels as if it might have come in from Outside, assuming for the sake of argument that there </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> an Outside, but how do you know that it isn’t just another thing that humans imagined up, taken on a bit of life because enough people believe?  Humans are more than creative enough to create ‘Fear of Cosmic Insignificance,’ and ‘Fear of the Incomprehensible.’  So we don’t actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span> how Other those things are.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, it can’t be one of those,” Aziraphale said, and then, more hesitantly, “can it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think it was a ghost,” Newt said.  “It didn’t strike me as, well, as human.  That leaves human creations, and—“</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And Unknowns,” Aziraphale filled in quietly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Besides, there are weird things in the Net.  I’ve encountered—ehhh, not </span>
  <em>
    <span>encountered</span>
  </em>
  <span> exactly, more like </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>encountered.  I was sent out a few years ago to do a proper Corruption—don’t ask me why, everyone thought the world would be ending, but bureaucracy doesn’t have to make sense—and I couldn’t find the guy.  Tried every sort of tracking you could name.  The thing is, this person is all over the internet.  E-books, Twitter, you name it.  The nearest I can figure is that Chuck Tingle </span>
  <em>
    <span>isn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> human, and he </span>
  <em>
    <span>doesn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> exist in the real world, and whatever he is, he lives on the internet somehow, telling the Forces of Evil to piss off and living his best life.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If there are things living on the internet,” Anathema said, “it would make sense that they can use computers however they want.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We might be able to use computer stuff to deal with them,” Newt said, very slowly.  An idea had been percolating in his mind, and now it was politely raising its hand for attention.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you mean?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, it’s what you said.  About, about having to make a sort of contract, an agreement, to exist on this plane of reality.  You have to agree that for every action, you’ll experience an equal and opposite reaction, and that when it’s hot, you’ll get warm, and that sort of thing.  What if—“  He started to say, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m not sure of this,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and then remembered that his theory might actually become more likely if he didn’t admit that.  “It seems logical that if something is living on the internet, wherever it came from and however it got there, it would have to make a, a sort of agreement with, with computer-ness.  Agree to exist according to the rules that govern computers.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Both Aziraphale and Crowley were looking at Newt in some surprise.  “Do you know some computer tricks,” Aziraphale said, “that might get rid of it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I might.  I think I do.”  Newt took a deep breath.  “There is a very real chance that I would brick your machine for good.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Make it nonfunctional,” Anathema translated.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale sighed.  “We may have to risk it.  I can’t have it going around chanting </span>
  <em>
    <span>ominous</span>
  </em>
  <span> all the time and bleeding at people.  Do you know, I tried to find out where those chanting people were from, and I couldn’t.  I’m not sure they have a presence outside the internet either.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt wondered about rules.  Was it possible, he thought, for something to exist by a different set of rules, such that perhaps it </span>
  <em>
    <span>needed</span>
  </em>
  <span> a summoning of some sort and could sort of tail-swallowingly arrange for summoners to exist just enough—or maybe “having a cult” was somehow a defining feature of whatever-it-was . . .</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rules and agreements.  Reality was not supposed to work by rules and agreements.  Except apparently it did.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He didn’t have much time to mull it over.  It seemed they were going back to the shop.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The windows of the bookshop were glowing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The windows of the bookshop were glowing in very odd, wrong-seeming colors, colors that seemed to fit into the human visual spectrum imperfectly and reluctantly, like an assassin into a rental tuxedo.  The street was nearly deserved when they arrived, and Newt didn’t think it was because of the brief rainstorm that had just passed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Inside the bookshop, things seemed to be writhing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I think your bookshop is full of tentacles,” Anathema said.  Her voice wasn’t quite steady, but it was a noble attempt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They’ll get blood on the </span>
  <em>
    <span>books!”</span>
  </em>
  <span>  Aziraphale actually wrung his hands, which Newt had never seen anyone do in real life.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I think maybe it’s ichor,” Anathema said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Strictly speaking, no.  In the Greek tradition, ichor was said to be the blood of the gods, not the blood of—well, of whatever monster tries to go after </span>
  <em>
    <span>my</span>
  </em>
  <span> books.”  Aziraphale still sounded fretful, but he also sounded determined.  He marched towards the door, threw it open, and didn’t flinch at the sound that came from within, which managed to combine the worst parts of gurgling, scratching, and the sniggering sort of laugh that someone gives when they have made a racist joke and think that everyone else should find it as funny as they do.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I must insist,” Aziraphale said, in ringing tones, “that you leave.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The tentacles did the noise again.  If it was the tentacles doing the noise, and not something more unspeakable, further in.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Very well.”  Aziraphale set his mouth and started to step over the threshold.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley grabbed his arm.  “What do you think you’re doing?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale looked surprised by the question.  “Newton can’t stop my computer unless someone gets him to it.  The only way to get him to it is through </span>
  <em>
    <span>that,</span>
  </em>
  <span> which has, not incidentally, taken over my shop and done who-knows-what to my first editions.  I’m going inside to deal with it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re coming too.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We are?” Anathema said incredulously.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I am.”  Newt thought his voice sounded rather far away from where his thoughts were, a few meters to the side, perhaps.  He was aware of stark, screaming mortal terror, of the horrible suspicion that the Thing could do </span>
  <em>
    <span>worse</span>
  </em>
  <span> than kill him, and he was having trouble looking at it.  But—on the other hand, if he left it alone, it might get </span>
  <em>
    <span>bigger.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  A growing mass of violently writhing horror in the middle of London—no, that didn’t sound like a good idea for any passers-by.  Or passers-more-or-less-near.  Or, eventually, London.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Newt, I don’t know what that could do to you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Reasonably certain,” Aziraphale said, “that it would have to touch him.”  He edged inside the door, waited until a tentacle-or-whatever-it-was had lashed away, and made a lightning grab for the umbrella stand.  “Just him and me, I think.  Fewer people to protect.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He had grabbed a Hello Kitty umbrella.  Newt could not imagine Aziraphale owning a Hello Kitty umbrella, so he assumed it must have been left in the umbrella stand by a customer, but it had obviously been part of Aziraphale’s mental landscape for a while, or he wouldn’t have grabbed for it with such certainty.  </span>
  <em>
    <span>Why</span>
  </em>
  <span> Aziraphale had grabbed it with certainty . . .”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why an um—” he started.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley, moving fast enough to remind Newt that he actually wasn’t human, covered Newt’s mouth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s a sword,” Aziraphale said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But it’s—“ Newt said, and got his mouth covered again for his pains.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A tentacle, glowing a ghastly pinkish green, lashed out of the depths of the shop towards the onlookers.  Without looking directly at his weapon, Aziraphale swiped sideways at it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a </span>
  <em>
    <span>whoomph</span>
  </em>
  <span> as flames trailed behind the umbrella.  The severed end of the tentacle fell to the floor, dissolving into thousands of writhing worms.  The stump, which did not contain anything as sane as flesh and blood, but instead cosmic darkness and smoke and eye-spraining distance, thrashed madly, and the Thing in the shop </span>
  <em>
    <span>screamed.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt clapped his hands to his ears.  It didn’t help.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After a moment, he lowered them.  Aziraphale was holding the Hello Kitty umbrella by his side, and it still had flames coming off it.  Not consuming it, as far as he could see, just—on it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s a sword,” Aziraphale repeated, “and I would appreciate it if you didn’t contradict me on that point until we’re well through this, dear boy.  Are you ready?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” Newt said honestly, “except I think I have to be.”  He squared his shoulders, wishing he had better shoulders to square.  “Let’s go.”</span>
</p>
<p>§</p>
<p>
  <span>Afterwards, Newt never could recall the entirety of the Battle of the Bookshop.  He thought about this, and decided that he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>just fine</span>
  </em>
  <span> with that.</span>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    
  </p>
</div><p>
  <span>The sights were bad enough.  The tentacles and wings and eyes and other assorted maybe-biology clearly emanated from the general area of the computer, but they resolutely declined to form any sort of coherent </span>
  <em>
    <span>being.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  The colors made Newt’s stomach roil.  He’d look at it, and think, </span>
  <em>
    <span>yes, that’s green, a rather nasty green, too,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and then he would wonder if it wasn’t, in fact, purple.  Or red.  Or chartreuse?  Newt was uncertain exactly what color chartreuse was, so he decided that the tentacles were chartreuse until proven otherwise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The sounds were worse.  It wasn’t that the sounds included ghastly grating and screeching, all at ear-bleeding volume.  It was the cold, crawling suspicion that if Newt listened hard enough, they would start making sense.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The smells were worst of all, but Newt lacked most of the vocabulary that he could have used to explain why.  It wasn’t that they smelled horrible, exactly.  It was more that he started thinking increasingly that they applied to </span>
  <em>
    <span>him.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  He would smell a deathlike reek, and then, after several moments of struggle later, he would have to look down at his hands and make absolutely sure that they weren’t rotted, because the smell was somehow about him and was trying to get inside his head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Through it all, Newt kept coming back to a single thought, and that thought was, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I am never, ever, ever going to underestimate Aziraphale.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It wasn’t that Aziraphale was especially fast.  It was just that he seemed to be invariably standing in exactly the right place for a swing of his Hello Kitty umbrella—</span>
  <em>
    <span>sword it’s a sword keep thinking it’s a sword</span>
  </em>
  <span>—to sear through a grasping tentacle or claw or thing that looked like a predatory caterpillar.  Newt stayed close behind him, and that was unquestionably the best place in the bookshop to be, but there were several times when a tentacle came at him from the side, screaming like a freight train, and he thought, </span>
  <em>
    <span>this is it, I’m done for, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and then Aziraphale was in the way with his sword, slashing or stabbing or on one occasion splitting the tentacle lengthwise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are you all right, Newton?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It didn’t touch me,” Newt assured him.  He didn’t want to address the larger question of all right, because he wasn’t.  He was terrified.  He was absolutely, truly, terrified, to the point where fear of death seemed like a quaint, cozy thing.  This wasn’t just fear of death, or fear of extreme pain followed by death.  This was fear of </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong. </span>
  </em>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then they were in front of the computer.  There was quite a lot of blood around it now.  Newt wondered where the blood had come from, and what the blood had come from.  Was blood part of the nature of the Thing?  Where the Thing went, blood followed, whether or not anything was bleeding?  Was it actually blood?  Was it actually red?  Somewhere between the front door and here, Newt had started wondering if he actually knew what colors </span>
  <em>
    <span>were,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and how one perceived them, and how one knew they were perceiving them, and it was doing unsettling things to his mental landscape.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale severed the tentacles coming out of the computer, and there was another scream, like sheet metal being violently ripped in half.  “There’s a problem,” he said, decapitating something that looked half like a frill shark and half like a millipede.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt thought that there were nothing </span>
  <em>
    <span>but</span>
  </em>
  <span> problems, but he still had a few molecules that were capable of being alarmed at the notion of a new one.  “Problem?”  His voice sounded high-pitched, and cracked, and very weak.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If something comes out of the computer at you, it will come at considerable speed.  So whatever you’re going to do, it should be done very quickly, I think.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right,” Newt said, and sat down at the computer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The screen was showing a writhing, pulsating mass of color and form that Newt could barely even look at.  But up at the top there was a blinking </span>
  <b>A&gt;</b>
  <span> prompt.  “Only a few steps,” Newt said, half to himself, and typed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <b>A&gt; run iexplore.exe</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The room, as well as the computer, seemed to shudder as Internet Explorer came up on the screen.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt honestly hadn’t expected it to do that much.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I said I had a computer trick,” he said aloud.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes?”  Aziraphale sounded as if he were expecting bad news.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, what I have is actually more like a computer </span>
  <em>
    <span>curse.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  If I try to use a computer, or definitely to </span>
  <em>
    <span>fix</span>
  </em>
  <span> one, it’ll all go wrong.  Something about me is completely incompatible with computers.  It’s the one thing in my life that I have complete confidence in.”  And confidence, and belief, Anathema had said, was the key to magic.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They needed magic.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So I’m going to try to fix your computer,” Newt said.  “I’m very sorry.”  He typed in www.bitdefender.com.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What are you trying to do to it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Download an antivirus software.”  It should have broken by now.  Why hadn’t it broken by now?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Unless the fact that Newt was actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>trying</span>
  </em>
  <span> to break this computer short-circuited the curse somehow.  The curse usually kicked in when Newt tried to do something constructive with a computer, when he tried to save a file, or use a spreadsheet program, or defrag a hard drive.  What if actually trying to destroy a computer made the curse give up in confusion?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>How could Newt make himself believe he was helping, when he knew he was actually trying to invoke his curse?  How did you do that?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sometimes, Anathema had said, you sort of had to </span>
  <em>
    <span>push</span>
  </em>
  <span> the thoughts out of your head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt took a deep breath, and closed his eyes for an instant—a bad move, since it seemed to make the sounds and smells pound on his tenderized brain even harder, and thought, </span>
  <em>
    <span>helping.  I am helping.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I am going to fix this computer.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Actually, if I can manage to download an antivirus software, it should do some good, so either way I fix this computer, I’m fixing this computer.  Really.  Sincerely.  Would I lie to me?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He opened his eyes again and pressed the download button.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a shriek, even louder than the ones that had come before.  Newt covered his ears, to absolutely no effect—but he couldn’t uncover his ears, it was so loud and so horrible that his body was operating entirely without his input.  His eyes squeezed themselves shut.  He felt a distinct sense of something around him, something spreading out from Aziraphale and protecting him, but it wasn’t enough, it couldn’t be enough, and the sound was sawing through his brain.  He heard A&gt; Y̷̧͗ȍ̵̩u̸̬͒ ̵̫̒c̸͓͝a̵͉̎n̷̯'̷͔͝t̵̘͗ ̶̯͠d̴̙͝ȍ̸̫ ̶̹̉ṭ̶ĥ̵͇i̵̯͊s̸̭̓ ̷̹͋t̵̢̃o̵̖͠ ̵̛͎ṁ̶̙ȩ̶̿!̸̩̒  He wasn’t sure how he could possibly hear the A prompt at the beginning, but he did.  He heard A&gt; H̶̟̊o̶͔͂w̶̪͂ ̴̤̿d̶͖͛a̶̭͂r̶̘̃e̸͉ ̶͕͒y̴͈̓ơ̶̡û̴͉?̷̰̄</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; Ï̴̳ ̷͙̈́ä̵̜́m̵̖̍ ̶̨͝t̸̪̑h̴͖̊e̷̻̽ ̵͍̇l̴̗͑a̴͍̓u̸̜͛ǵ̸͙h̸̺̕t̶̘̂ẽ̷̢r̸̨͂ ̷̣̅t̷̗͊h̷̢͛å̵̱ț̴̓ ̴͈̄t̴͓̑w̵̤̓i̴͓̽š̷̡t̸͒͜s̴͓͑ ̶̜̕į̶͋n̸͚̈́ ̶̟̊ț̸̿h̸̢̅é̷̻ ̴̕ͅd̷̟͂ḙ̵͝p̵̬̒t̶͍̂h̵̗͘s̷̝͠</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; I̴̬̍̚ ̵̞͇͝ā̸̖̬͎m̷̻͛̇̆ ̸̗̏t̸̡͔͍͘h̸͎̩̄̐͝e̴̡̍̕ ̶̘̠̳͂̊͒ẖ̷̑̎ô̸̡̠l̸̺̯̐͜ḛ̵͚͌͗͠ ̷̜͉͈̐̏̂ỉ̷̝̪̒n̴͈̂ ̶̗͑̍͒ṱ̷̽h̷͖̄̚ë̵͇͇̣͝ ̴̯͕̽͂̌n̵̨̯͕̊̎̈u̵͑̓͜m̷̖̈́b̷͔̠̯͋ḙ̵͝r̴̛̦s̶̫̹͎͌͊</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; Y̴̪̑ō̸̟ṷ̴̓ ̴̬̉c̵̪̐ȧ̵̘n̷͇̿n̵̠̊o̴̡̍t̶͇̀ ̸̫͘d̷̳̈́ê̸̼f̵̖́e̶͉̿a̷̖͘t̵͈͝ ̶̙̿m̸͎̄ę̶͝</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; Y̸̘͒̎ȏ̵̭͜͝u̶̪̓ ̶̼͗͝c̴̗̹̄̉a̶͉̽ǹ̵̞͚n̵̛͙͇̔o̴͇̙̍t̶̳̃̄ ̵̩͑͐b̵̮̖̈a̶͚͍͗n̵̲͆i̵̫͋͘s̸͔̤̽h̶̯̖̎ ̴͕̽̽m̷̦̤͋̾e̶̛̩̖͝</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; Y̵̢̧͆o̷̬͛u̵̲̦͛̈ ̷̗̹̂ç̷̈́̏ã̵̧̝̾n̷̗͈̽n̸͔̂͋o̷̖̪͐ẗ̷̲̺́</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; T̸̫͗ḩ̴̓i̴͈͐s̴̥͘ ̶̩̀ĉ̷̠å̶͖n̷̛̫'̴̺̅t̷̤̍ ̵͇̑b̸̬͋e̵͓̐ ̴͚͗h̷̡͒á̶͎p̵͇̂p̷͕̏e̶͚̾n̸̙͂i̸̘͊n̸̤̐g̶͚̐</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; Ț̷̗̭͇̹̑̽͂̔̈͒̈̉h̷̡̢͖̙͎͍̣͛͊̍̌̆̒̂̚i̴̥̟͌̓͐̊s̸̖̝͔̝̥̗̀̔̇́̉̊ ̶̟͉̱̟̰̲͍̄̑̑̑̐̚ć̶̓ͅa̷͙͖̟̺̙̻̎͒̏͗̾n̷̨͓̾̀̾͌͂'̸̦͉̈́͊͂̑̐̒͘͝t̶̰͖̲̻̰̗̏̈́ ̴̺̰̪̍͐͌̂b̴̖͍̍̊͜e̷̡̠͎̞̖̘̎̓̈́̎̿̚ ̶̼̪͈͔̮̞͓͂̆̽ḣ̵̖̟̙͖̳̏͝ȃ̷̛̦̗̱̎͜ͅp̶̟̹̮̓̓̾͜͜͠p̶͓̲̺̦͈̂̀̏͘͘ͅę̸̲̈́̂̓͘n̸̨̢̡̤̞͓̐͂̽̈͘i̵̼̰̼̓͆͆̕̚͜n̴̛̻̏̃̾̏̋g̶̡̦̫̏̍̈́̽͗͆̉</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A&gt; Ţ̴͈̼̱̰̖̲̅͑ḩ̵̰̯̫̰̰̮͙̖̪͕̔͆í̶̺̠̫̳͇͇͓̻͓͓͖̟͓̲s̷̤͓̔͐̄̍̔̌͑̃̐̔̿̊͠͠ ̸̨̛͎̈͒̆̈́̐̆̐̂̓͊̒́̔͛͘̕͘͜͠ç̵̫̱͍̲͚̏̋̊̿̋̾̿͑̍̇̔̐̽͝͝ͅä̶̛͇͖͓̦͔̺̰̖̟̖̥̟͎̜́͆͌͑͗̊̽̓̐̂̋͒̆̊͌̒̎͌̚ͅņ̸͚̩̖͖̺̟͔̭̬͓͖̩͙̲̳̈́͑̎̍̆͊͌͛̏̌̊̒͑̓͝'̸̭͓͍̻̥̪͔̓͒͗̂͊͐͑̃̃͋͗̓̾̂̈́͆͗̽͠͝͠t̷͕̜̏̒̃̌͗̋̋̋̇̆̈̚̕͠͝ ̵̹̰͍͓͎̺̲̗͋̎͗͜ͅb̶̼̮͙̄̓̔̑̆̓̈́̔̔̄̀͑̀̕̚̕͝͝͠e̴̢͚̻̙̹̠͔̔̇̃̇͋̕͝ ̷̡̨̻̗͔͔͙̲͚̪̠̜̟͍̪̻͎̳̹̔̂̽̆̃͂͛̉̔̓̃͐̕̕͜h̶̩̦̥̼̺̳̣̘͓̤̺̜̤̐ͅa̸̲̲̠̹̦̙͇̩̗̔͛̂͌̎̄͆͗̓̐̈̔̓͘͜p̷̡̢̨̛̛̲̮̣͓͍̲̲̯̱̺̮̬͎̙̬̩͇̹̈́̔̐̿̒͋̋̊͝p̴̢̛̛͇̈́̐̑̃͌̔̒͛̎̉̓̒ḙ̷̩͕̒̈́̐̈̌́̊̿̈́̾̎̈̉̅̕͘̚͝n̶̢͉͇̬̰͙̝͕̣̜̻̜̫̥̙̆̀̊̚ị̶̢̟̞͇̯̯͉̣͇̳͂̎̍̍̔͑̔̏̀͐́̏̌ͅͅn̷̨̧̛̖̯̳̰̬͈͖̠̦̺̪̱̘͕̣̫̭̪̝̽̏g̴̫̖̫̮̙̠̯̗̳͇̫͌̽̂̃͑̊̔̚͝</span>
</p>
<p><br/>
§</p>
<p>
  <span>“Newton.  Newton!  You’re all right.  It’s all right.  You did it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt opened his eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was curled up on the floor beneath the computer desk, and Aziraphale was bending over him.  He wasn’t sure how he ended up curled beneath the computer desk, but after reflection, decided that it wasn’t a question he needed to examine.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s gone?”  His voice sounded hoarse, as if he’d been screaming.  He didn’t remember screaming.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s gone,” said Anathema from right behind Aziraphale.  “It didn’t take you long, actually.  Maybe five minutes.  Which is just as well, because Crowley was getting the tire iron from his car and we were going to come in after you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley made a vaguely embarrassed, unspellable noise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt sat up, banged his head on the computer desk, and then moved out from under it, rubbing his head.  “I mean, is it actually, completely gone?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It does seem to be.  Neither Crowley nor I can sense anything untoward.  Anathema tried dowsing for it just a moment before you woke up, and it does seem to be entirely absent.  I must say, we were a trifle worried about you.  You were at close range when it—left, or expired, or whatever things of that nature do, and it seemed to have caused you quite a lot of distress.  I sheltered you as best I could, but, well, you know how it is.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt absolutely did not know how it was, and wasn’t sure how to ask.  He hadn’t had his eyes open, he had no way to see what was happening, but part of him strongly insisted that Aziraphale had shielded him with </span>
  <em>
    <span>wings.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  Whether they were metaphysical wings, or metaphorical wings, or solid, white wings like an angel in a cathedral window—that was something his instincts were less clear on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He stood up, and noticed the Hello Kitty umbrella sitting on the desk.  “Is it safe to leave that there?  I mean, can it catch fire without you holding it, or—“</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course not,” Aziraphale said.  “It’s just an umbrella.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“The computer does seem thoroughly broken, I’m afraid,” Aziraphale said to Newt at their next regular get-together.  He handed Newt a mug of hot cocoa and sat down opposite.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” Newt said sincerely.  “I would have fixed it properly if I could.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Please, put it out of your mind.  You did what was necessary, and more than most people could have done, and definitely more than I should have asked of you.  You were the hero of the hour, really.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt had absolutely no idea how to respond to being called the hero of the hour, let alone being the hero of the hour, so he shrugged awkwardly and let the comment go by.  After a moment, he said, “And there’s no damage to the bookshop?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It was thoroughly disordered,” Aziraphale said, “books thrown to the floor, and so forth—although I do wonder about the </span>
  <em>
    <span>thrown,</span>
  </em>
  <span> because I haven’t found much damage yet.  At any rate, books were on the floor, and one or two were lying </span>
  <em>
    <span>open on the pages,</span>
  </em>
  <span> bending their spine, which I don’t expect I’ll be forgiving the entity for any time soon—but on the whole, it seems to be the sort of damage I can repair.  Putting the shelves back into recognizable order will take me some days more, I think.  Perhaps a week or two.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sounded rather happy about the prospect.  It was, Newt thought, an opportunity to catalogue books, and also an excuse to declare the shop closed until further notice.  Both those things made for a happy angel.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Really, Newt was somewhat unique in being a human who was welcome in the shop.  Aziraphale always </span>
  <em>
    <span>sounded</span>
  </em>
  <span> happy to host Anathema, but Newt had noticed that he seemed to stand consistently between her and his Occult Studies section—not that Anathema could have located the Occult Studies section, any more than Newt could have found it until Aziraphale had pointed it out, but apparently an angel’s territorial instincts (if angels had instincts, or territory) weren’t as easily mollified as all that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt was still a bit bewildered by the question of why he had become Aziraphale’s friend.  He </span>
  <em>
    <span>liked</span>
  </em>
  <span> being Aziraphale’s friend, but how had it happened?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was, Newt decided, just one of those things that happened.  In a largely incomprehensible parade of things that also happened.  Perhaps that was what life was: a parade of things happening for reasons that ranged from the obscure to the absurd, and if you looked back and tried to sort out how you got from </span>
  <em>
    <span>there</span>
  </em>
  <span> to </span>
  <em>
    <span>here,</span>
  </em>
  <span> you would give yourself a headache.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I have been calling around,” Aziraphale said, interrupting Newt’s train of thought.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Calling around?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“For a computer repair expert.  Most of the ones I have contacted refuse to work on an Amstrad, which I think is a bit churlish of them, but what can you do.  Apparently it’s uncommon to work on a computer that’s more than a few years old.  Imagine if mechanics tried to treat cars that way!  There would be an uprising!  But at any rate, I have decided to specifically look for antique computer specialists, and I may have found a candidate—we’ll see.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are you sure that’s wise?” Newt said.  “I mean, we don’t want It to come back.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I think It is most sincerely gone,” Aziraphale assured him.  “And besides, I threw out that modem.  If I decide to get on the internet again, I’ll get another one, perhaps one with more safety features.  I </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> quite enjoying Wikipedia.”  He sighed, then brightened.  “Fortunately, Crowley has allowed me to do a little bit of editing from his computer.  He finds it amusing for some reason.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt knew Crowley well enough to know that what Crowley found amusing was </span>
  <em>
    <span>chaos,</span>
  </em>
  <span> which matched his own dire premonitions about Aziraphale editing Wikipedia.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wondered uneasily what would happen when Aziraphale finally got himself </span>
  <em>
    <span>banned</span>
  </em>
  <span> from Wikipedia, and sent up a brief, not-aimed-at-anyone-in-particular prayer that there wasn’t a Hello Kitty umbrella within reach when it occurred.  He didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>think</span>
  </em>
  <span> Aziraphale would hurt anyone.  But he wasn’t certain.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You could just keep using Crowley’s computer,” Newt said.  “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not only a matter of getting on the internet,” Aziraphale said.  “I did tell you, I think, that I consider that computer a friend of sorts.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You did,” Newt said.  “I hope you can find someone to fix it for you.  I’ll look around for people if you can’t find someone.”  It had been a while since Newt had tried to build his own computer to get around the curse (it hadn’t gone well), but some of the people who had helped him had to still be in business.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thank you,” Aziraphale said sincerely.  “I am most glad to have had your help through all of this.”</span>
</p>
<p>§</p>
<p>
  <span>In the back room of a certain Soho bookshop, a computer sat.  It wasn’t plugged in, but then, it hadn’t been plugged in since it was bought, and that had never inconvenienced it particularly.  And it didn’t stop it from powering up, with a faint whirr, right now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There are rules for existing in a situation, after all.  To exist in the physical world, a being must have a body that can be pushed and pulled and affected by the physical world.  To exist in the landscape of computers, a being must be affected by programs.  To be a creature from Beyond, a being needs cults, and ominous bloodstains, and colors that aren’t colors.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And if one is a monster, the rules say, there is always that last-minute note of unease.  The moment when the eyes open.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As it always had, a green prompt appeared on the computer’s screen.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <b>A&gt;</b>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
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